Contributors may take heat for pay grabBy David M. Brown
TRIBUNE-REVIEW Tuesday, September 13, 2005

A group trying to
throw out all state legislators over the General Assembly's self-approved pay
raise is now targeting financial supporters of those elected officials.

PACleanSweep plans to identify major contributors to lawmakers on its
Web site -- PACleanSweep.com -- and push for a boycott of businesses that
donate to incumbents after Sept. 19, an organizer said Monday.

Russ
Diamond, chairman of the Harrisburg-based "Operation Clean Sweep," said the
plan aims to "reduce the flow of money and show the public who is helping
incumbents maintain their grip on power."

"When you are at war, you've
got to cut off the enemy's supply lines," he said. "That's exactly what we're
in. The government has failed us and, as a side effect, they have really
declared economic war on us."

Without any debate, lawmakers raised
their pay -- as well as salaries for top state officials and judges -- during
the early morning hours of July 7.

Since then, there's been a
groundswell of opposition from taxpayers.

The bill Gov. Ed Rendell
signed into law allows lawmakers to collect unvouchered expenses in amounts
equal to the raises to get around a constitutional prohibition barring
legislators from receiving increases in the same two-year term in which they
were approved. The actual raises take effect on Dec. 1, 2006, for most
legislators.

William Billings, 59, an Overbrook resident who is upset
about the pay hike, said he would join the boycott.

"I will also call
the companies and say, 'I really don't appreciate you sending money to people
that are that arrogant about our taxes,'" Billings said.

"I wouldn't be in favor of removing (legislators) indiscriminately,"
said Dave Majernik, 59, of Plum, a state GOP committeeman, who cosponsored a
resolution approved by the Republican State Committee on Saturday that was
critical of the pay raise.

A more-effective approach is to build a
consensus in the Legislature that the pay raise was wrong and get it rescinded,
Majernik said. "I see popular support for repealing it."

Diamond said
defeating the entire Legislature is the only approach that will work because
legislative leaders will never "let a repeal happen." Also, even incumbents who
voted against the pay raise didn't step forward with protests over the state
constitution being circumvented, he said.

The earliest a boycott of
contributors would start is mid-October, Diamond said. The Sept. 19 deadline
for contributions to stop gives "fair warning" that "you're either with us or
against us," he said.

Fred Taub of Boycott Watch, a Cleveland,
Ohio-based group that monitors boycotts on the truthfulness of their claims,
said the effectiveness of PACleanSweep's proposed boycott depends on the size
of the companies targeted and other factors. Boycotts have a quicker impact on
small "mom-and-pop" businesses than on large firms with popular brand names, he
said.

"In a political boycott, it really depends on how angry the
people are," Taub said. "(PACleanSweep) could theoretically affect elections
dramatically."